Migrate from Source install to Release install¶

The 1.1 version of Mobilizon brings Elixir releases support. An Elixir release is a self-contained directory that contains all of Mobilizon's code (front-end and backend), it's dependencies, as well as the Erlang Virtual Machine and runtime (only the parts you need). As long as the release has been assembled on the same OS and architecture, it can be deploy and run straight away. Read more about releases.

We provide a small script to handle things like open the interactive shell, restart the release or execute mix tasks.

With releases, we adopt a more traditional way of managing configuration and media files.

Configuration is now assumed to be in /etc/mobilizon/config.exs by default.
You can change the path with the MOBILIZON_CONFIG_PATH environment variable. As this file holds Mobilizon only read-access to this file.
Uploads are now assumed to be in /var/lib/mobilizon/uploads by default. You can change the path in your config file, with the following config:
```
config :mobilizon, Mobilizon.Web.Upload.Uploader.Local, uploads: "/var/lib/mobilizon/uploads"`
```
The release files will be assumed to located in /opt/mobilizon by default.
Feel free to put them elsewhere and adapt the following instructions, like /usr/local/lib/mobilizon.

These steps are to be executed as root or with sudo, in your mobilizon current folder:

Start by stopping the Mobilizon process:

systemctl stop mobilizon

Download and install¶

Info

To get the latest package URL, you should go to our release page and copy the URL from the latest tar.gz package.

The https://joinmobilizon.org/latest-package URL redirects to the latest stable release package available (Gitlab doesn't allow to do this directly currently), but you shouldn't use it it you want to get a beta version or a different version.

Download the latest release build and unzip it:

curl -L 'https://joinmobilizon.org/latest-package' -o /tmp/mobilizon.tar.gz
tar xzf /tmp/mobilizon.tar.gz -C /tmp/

Move the release to the install folder:

mv /tmp/mobilizon /opt/
rm /tmp/mobilizon.tar.gz

Set the proper owner to /opt/mobilizon

chown -R mobilizon:mobilizon /opt/mobilizon

Move the configuration¶

Create the config directory
```
mkdir -p /etc/mobilizon
```
Copy your current configuration to the new location:

Configuration file

Your configuration file might be either in config/runtime.exs or config/prod.secret.exs (prior to 1.1.0). Make sure to copy the correct file.

cp config/runtime.exs /etc/mobilizon/config.exs

Adapt the configuration¶

Configuration header

Make sure the top of the config file starts with import Config and not use Mix.Config. If not, replace it.

If your config file doesn't includes server: true under Mobilizon.Web.Endpoint, add it.

config :mobilizon, Mobilizon.Web.Endpoint,
+ server: true,

Move the media uploads¶

Create the media directory
```
mkdir -p /var/lib/mobilizon/uploads
```

Move all uploads to the new location:

mv uploads/* /var/lib/mobilizon/uploads

Make sure the uploaded files have the proper owner. Mobilizon needs write access to this folder.
```
chown -R mobilizon:mobilizon /var/lib/mobilizon/uploads
```

Move the GeoIP database file¶

Create the GeoIP directory
```
mkdir -p /var/lib/mobilizon/geo
```

Move the GeoIP database to the new location:

mv priv/data/GeoLite2-City.mmdb /var/lib/mobilizon/geo/

Make sure the GeoIP database has the proper owner. Mobilizon only needs read access to this GeoIP database file.
```
chown -R mobilizon:mobilizon /var/lib/mobilizon/geo
```

Execute pending database migrations¶

You may have updated to a newer version, so let's run database migrations just to be sure:

sudo -u mobilizon /opt/mobilizon/bin/mobilizon_ctl migrate

Test that the instance starts properly¶

Run Mobilizon as a daemon to test the startup

/opt/mobilizon/bin/mobilizon daemon && tail tmp/log/erlang.log.1 -f

If the output contains the following Access Mobilizon.Web.Endpoint at https://yourinstance.com without any error messages, it should be fine. Otherwise your configuration is probably incorrect and you need to check it.

Either way, exit the tail -f with Ctrl+C then stop the daemon with:

/opt/mobilizon/bin/mobilizon stop

Edit the nginx configuration¶

Edit the nginx virtual host file to change paths:

$EDITOR /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mobilizon.conf

- /home/mobilizon/live/priv/static
+ /opt/mobilizon/priv/static

- /home/mobilizon/live/priv/errors
+ /opt/mobilizon/priv/errors

Test that configuration is correct and reload nginx
```
nginx -t && systemctl reload nginx
```

Edit the systemd configuration¶

Edit the systemd unit file to change the path to mobilizon:

$EDITOR /etc/systemd/system/mobilizon.service

And change the following lines:

- WorkingDirectory=/home/mobilizon/live
- ExecStart=/usr/bin/env mix phx.server
- ExecReload=/bin/kill $MAINPID
+ WorkingDirectory=/opt/mobilizon
+ ExecStart=/opt/mobilizon/bin/mobilizon start
+ ExecStop=/opt/mobilizon/bin/mobilizon stop

Reload systemd
```
systemctl daemon-reload
```
Finally, restart the Mobilizon service
```
systemctl restart mobilizon
```

Remove the source install¶

Once we're confident everything works properly, we can get rid of the source install.

Go to the mobilizon's user $HOME directory and remove the live directory and dependencies cache.
```
cd /home/mobilizon
rm -r live/ .cache/ .hex/ .mix/
```
Move mobilizon's $HOME directory to the new mobilizon root folder. The usermod utility will issue a warning telling that the directory already exists, but it will perform the change.
```
systemctl stop mobilizon
usermod -m -d /opt/mobilizon mobilizon
systemctl start mobilizon
```

Last update: December 5, 2023